Author: THE CARPENTERS

Brand: Polygram

Format: Best of

PartNumber: CD540251

Release Date: 10-10-1994

Details: Amazon.ca The sound Richard and Karen Carpenters made was unequivocally Mum-Pop (as opposed to Dad-Rock), and quintessentially bourgeois, but there is not necessarily any shame in that. The suburban life has its own poignancy, and The Carpenters' semi-detached soul expressed this quotidian sorrow better than anyone. "What I've got they used to call the blues", Karen sighs on "Rainy Days And Mondays" in that low, lazy, languorous but diamond-clear voice, "Nothing is really wrong, feeling like I don't belong..." This mannered, mellow melancholia was perfect feel-sorry-for-yourself music. Indeed, the Carpenters were at their worst when at their chirpiest: the excruciating "Jambalaya" and "Top Of The World", the icky one-world sentiments of "Sing" (originally written for Sesame Street), "A Kind Of Hush" and "Bless The Beasts And Children", and the simply berserk "Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft". Richard Carpenter's genius, like Isaac Hayes, was as a reinterpreter of other people's material (Burt Bacharach's "They Long To Be Close To You", a radically downtempo version of "Ticket To Ride"), and although space and time have bestowed unintended comedy value upon lines like "Why do birds suddenly appear / Every time you are near?", the Carpenters sound--lush yet simple, sophisticated yet naive, all plinking pianos, tinkling glockenspiels and heavenly harmonies--is timeless. --Simon Price

UPC: 731454025126

EAN: 0731454025126

Model: CD540251

Languages: English

Binding: audioCD

Item Condition: UsedVeryGood